I’ve Always Been This Way
I don’t remember a time in my life when I couldn’t do it. My parents said I talked from a very early age, and from the time I could talk I was telling people their business. Some called me precocious because they didn’t like their dirty laundry being aired in front of others. My parents were mortified. They never knew what was going to come out of my mouth.
My parents tried their best they could to teach me self-control and to teach me to keep my mouth shut, but I just couldn’t seem to help myself. If I didn’t say what came in my mind, I felt like I was just going to explode, and sometimes it came out like an explosion. The inevitable day came when my parents reached their maximum capacity for handling whatever came out of my mouth. Everybody has a limit. You think you don’t, but I promise you, you do. If you’ve never been pushed there, be thankful. Be extremely grateful.
Back in my day, you could sell kids, and so in my youth, I was sold. My parents told the men I was an unruly fortune teller. As I was standing there listening to them describe me I was shocked to hear that description. A fortune teller. Can’t everyone do what I do? Doesn’t everyone know what I know and just has the self-control not to say it? Apparently not. That is the first time I realized just how different I really was.
The men started working with me, refining my skills, my showmanship. There were props and getups and roles to play. Before people came to see me, they paid my owners. My owners would walk them in, introduce them and tell me what they wanted to know or what their concerns were. The rest was like taking candy from a baby. Some of it was reading their body language. When I spoke or asked a question, did they tense up, suck in a breath, touch their neck, turn to the door, scratch their nose, twirl their hair, cross their arms?
And then there were times I just knew what was going on. I knew the secrets they were hiding. My owners would be standing in the back of the room listening as I spewed out their dirty, dark secrets and how they tried to hide them from their friends and family. I told them whether or not their secrets were safe which they never were because my owners would extort money from them every single time.
Then there were those pitiful ones who wanted to know about the loved ones on the other side or if someone would fall in love with them. Yuck! Sentimental saps! Of course there were times I told them what their deceased family members had to say. Sometimes I made it up, and I would tell them what they needed to do in order to get things to go their way.
This was my life.
I did have down time, but I always had someone with me to make sure I didn’t escape. It was during one of these outings that I ran across two men who really irritated me to no end, so I made sure to give them grief.
I found out they were on their way to pray, and I couldn’t help myself, I started yelling, “These men, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation, are the slaves of the Most High God.”
It’s rather difficult to focus on prayer when someone is yelling, “These men, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation, are the slaves of the Most High God.”
Of course, the yelling wasn’t enough. It became boring, mundane. It wasn’t entertaining enough, so over the days I made it a fanfare like they were princes and pretended to blow the royal horn and read the royal edict, “These men, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation, are the slaves of the Most High God.”
One time I acted like the court jester, jumping around, doing flips, making faces, and proclaiming in weird voices I could muster, “These men, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation, are the slaves of the Most High God.”
I could have gone on for days! But then one of them turned around and said, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!”
Immediately, it felt like something stepped out of me with a jolt. It was gone. My gift. It was gone.
My owners were furious. Actually, furious may be too tame of a word. They snatched up the man who commanded my gift to be gone and took him away. I think his name was Paul.
There is power in the name of Jesus Christ.
There was an immediate response by the evil spirit that possessed the slave girl. It obeyed the command to come out of her without hesitation.
There is no one who will not bend a knee and confess to God (Romans 14:11).
We don’t know what happened to the girl. We don’t know if she became a follower of Christ. We don’t know what her future held, but what we can surmise is her life was radically changed.
The slave girl’s story can be found in Acts 16:16-21. In Her Sandals is my humble attempts to put on the sandals of the women in the Bible and wonder what they might have felt, heard, smelled, seen, and put it into story form without adding to Scripture.